GLAMOROUS, raven-haired and immaculately coutured, there is no ignoring the new face in Anfield’s directors’ box.

Sitting alongside the Reds’ new owner, her husband John W. Henry, Linda Pizzuti is never going to be far from the spotlight.

And her regular effusive tweets from the stands about her new-found love of the Kop and its anthems have made her an instant favourite with fans. She is, after all, credited with pestering Henry to ask Tom Hicks if Liverpool was for sale.

But there is something way beyond the regular tabloid-generated WAG about Ms Pizzuti. Although on paper their romance may seem like a tale of multi-millionaire boy meets much younger (30 years to be precise) beautiful girl, their relationship is actually far from the cynical norm.

For a start, she was very much the pursued, not the pursuer. If anything she did her best to avoid falling for the 61-year-old Boston Red Sox boss. Mindful of the age gap, the fact that he was already twice-divorced and that they mixed in a relatively small social circle, she repeatedly turned down his attempts to woo her.

When he suggested a date, she told him bluntly: "It would be a fantastically bad idea to go out with you."

She is also no dumb brunette. In fact she earned a masters degree in real estate development aged 26 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of America’s most prestigious universities.

Working for a development firm founded by her Italian-born father Don, a successful Bostonian entrepreneur, she was able to indulge her passion for adventure. Pals recall her eating dinner on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and diving for shipwrecks in the Philippines.

It was this independent spirit, they add, which made her irresistible to the notoriously enigmatic businessman.

John Henry’s divorce from second wife Peggy, with whom he has a daughter, had only been finalised a year when he first set eyes on Linda in June 2008.

He was at a dinner with friends and the attraction, on his part at least, was instant. She had no idea who he was.

Henry engineered an introduction and they went, in a group, for dinner. At the end of the night he handed her his Red Sox business card and offered: "Let me know if you’d ever like to go a baseball game." She has since admitted she had no intention of accepting.

They met again by coincidence at another function 12 days later, and it was then that he revealed a chivalrous side which would help to win her over. Heading afterwards to a nightclub in the rain, he grabbed a restaurant table umbrella and held it over her as they walked together. She was, says the girl friend who detailed their romance in Boston Magazine, "like Alice in her wonderland".

But Linda was still not convinced by his romantic overtures. She refused his suggestion to meet her in Paris during her trip to Europe and went alone, only to be followed days later by an ardent email from a determined Henry.

In it, he concluded: "I don’t have any illusions about capturing your heart. You’ve very innocently made my world brighter, better, lighter and warmer."

She wrote back: "I am not so naive as to believe I actually possess the qualities you attribute to me. But thank you."

Still, though, she would only agree to a ‘friend date’ as she called it – a cookery lesson on his yacht. It was there that he produced two specially-made aprons for the occasion: one which read ‘Ms Pizzazz’, his nickname for her, and one which read ‘Fantastically Bad Idea’ – a jokey reference to her first snub.

A week later, after watching a screening of Mamma Mia! together, Henry finally showed his hand. "I must be in love," he is reported to have declared, "because there’s no way I would have sat through that movie if Ms Pizzazz hadn’t been next to me!"

Despite sweeping her off her feet with a helicopter tour of Manhattan for her birthday, Linda was still not 100% certain. But, after he offered to end it if their age difference was simply too much, she told friends: "There are no guarantees in life. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. I’m not going to walk out from this incredibly special connection for the fear that I could outlive him, or that society will disapprove."

After a typically unorthodox proposal in a lift at the Four Seasons hotel, New York, Henry and Linda were married last summer and in September their first daughter was born.

She is now a permanent fixture at his side, as he avidly follows his sporting business interests on both sides of the Atlantic. which means Liverpool is likely to see a whole lot more of the stylish Ms Pizzuti in the future.

Theirs is a hectic life, even by jet-set standards. But Linda insists Henry, if anything, has helped to calm her.

"I tend to be over-scheduled," she admits, "but he has a better balance in his life. He’ll savour a sunset, a beautiful day, a laugh, a warm feeling. He has slowed me down a bit."